Stanford University School of Medicine researchers have released findings from a telephone-based study of “Internet addiction” in which over 2,500 adults responded to questions designed to determine if the Internet has become a problem in terms of addiction or other impulse control disorders.
Interviewers asked eight questions, which yielded the following results: 5.9 percent of respondents felt their relationships suffered as a result of excessive Internet use; 8.7 percent attempted to conceal non-essential Internet use; 3.7 percent felt preoccupied by the Internet when offline; 13.7 percent found it hard to stay away from the Internet for several days at a time; 8.2 percent utilized the Internet as a way to escape problems or relieve negative mood; 12.3 percent had tried to cut back on Internet use, of whom 93.8 percent were successful; and, 12.4 percent stayed online longer than intended very often or often.
Adult entertainment was not singled out for special attention, being lumped in with online gambling, e-mail, blogging and other forms of Internet use in the study.
Critics of the survey argued that if a series of questions similar to those listed above were asked in instances of alcohol addiction, alcoholics who say their relationships had suffered would frequently also have attempted to conceal it, used it to escape problems; in most cases, virtually the whole list of markers would apply. In this study, however, when any combination of four proposed sets of four diagnostic criteria were considered, there was a dramatic fall-off (to 0.7 percent) in terms of how many respondents reported all four.
Portions of this courtesy of the Free Speech X-Press, the weekly newsletter of the Free Speech Coalition. More info at www.freespeechcoalition.com.
